A down economy, a slow recovery, a localized situation that is impacting employment in your local market is not a reason for your practice to be suffering.  Your practice growth does not have to be declining,  This is not an emergency. 

The reason I can say this with confidence is through my direct experience.  I founded Top Practices in January of 2007 and since that time have worked directly with podiatrists, lawyers, other medical practices and some small businesses and have seen them achieve double -digit growth in the exact market in which other medical practices were down 10%, 15%, or more. The single difference is that these Top Practices had a program in place to grow their practices that was relied on nothing outside of their practice. In fact, as you already know, they grew their practices through "Word of Mouth". And "Word of Mouth" is completely under our control. Forget Washington, D.C., forget your state capital, and forget insurance companies too.

The fact is, any medical practice can market and grow their way to prosperity (by this I mean double-digit growth year over year) by taking control of their growth and by using their number one asset -their list. That list of people who know, trust, like and respect you. 

Focusing on word of mouth does not mean hoping your happy patients will tell others about your or your referring medical practices will step it up.  It means building a foundation that supports, builds, grows, and reaps the benefits of managing your list.

I've written extensively on how this works and I outline the foundation and the pillars of successful marketing in my book "Why Most Podiatry Marketing Doesn't Work".